Twenty Ways to Assimilate in the USA

God Bless America.

From Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

I have experienced my share of racism and sexism while existing as a South Asian woman in America, but I have also assimilated quite well.

If you would also like to know how to assimilate with success, here are 20 helpful tips:

1. Giggle and say thank you when someone says you’re exotic.
2. Don’t learn your mother tongue.
3. If you learn your mother tongue, only speak it in private.
4. Talk about how dirty it is in your native country.
5. Smile. A lot.
6. List gratitudes about living in America.
7. Talk about how you or your parents achieved the American Dream.
8. Keep smiling.
9. Chat about how Abraham Lincoln was a great president.
10. Tell your friends how you’re glad colonization is totally over.
11. Celebrate when a person of color becomes a CEO without questioning capitalism’s role in racism and sexism.
12. Say, “I don’t see color.”
13. I hope you’re still smiling.
14. Discuss how socialism has never “worked” (as if capitalism does).
15. Apologize for something totally out of your control.